


Sheep Go To Heaven Goats Go To Hell

by abolkonsky



Category: The Gentlemen (2019)
Genre: Fletcher being Fletcher, Light Swearing, M/M, Mickey... not quite himself, Raymond being Raymond, plot? I'll give it a thought
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23414134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abolkonsky/pseuds/abolkonsky
Summary: Fletcher can't help himself and gets Raymond into the trouble of his life. The story picks up months after the film. Mickey's still looking to sell the business and retire, but this time he knows better the lay of the land and is wiser. He's sworn to lay low and conduct his dealings under everyone's radar. The business is still in good shape despite the trials and tribulations, though the same thing couldn't be said about his mental health.
Relationships: Raymond Smith/Fletcher
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1# As you'll notice, I decided to have Fletcher's full name be Louis Fletcher. My theory was that Ray keeps his distance by referring to him by his surname, (why I think Fletcher is not his given name). And I choose Louis as a nod to the similarities of character between Louis Renault from Casablanca and him.  
> [UPDATE: apparently Fletcher's full name is 'Peter Fletcher'. I'll still use Louis here, tho.]
> 
> 2# It's 03/04, I wrote this a few days ago and now rereading it I see, it aged like milk. The next chapter won't look like a load of Thesaurus puke. (I read back the dialogues... no one talks like that)
> 
> 3# It's good that I'm apologizing for the shittiness of it here in the for-notes. That will make people read it.
> 
> 4# O to be a russian, to read russian flaymond fics, of my russian friends, with my russian eyes, with russian heart, in a russian house, on a russian laptop, on the network (i learned this slang from someone on the flaymond groupchat)
> 
> 5# The quarantine is a curse, the walls are nearing. I long for the endless степи.

'You should have told beforehand you'll pop in,' said Raymond, going straight to his kitchen and turning away from Fletcher immediately, as if to show that the fact that he didn't close the door on his face does not signal warm hospitality. 'I won't say I'm glad to see you,' he went on. 'How are you doing? I have guests, but don't worry.' He glanced back over his shoulder. 'Your shoes!'

Fletcher silently slipped out of his pair of Oxfords, glancing at the unfamiliar faces of Raymond's two colleagues and especially at the elegant Eyler's hands, with such long white fingers, with purple veins crawling on his wrist like venomous snakes, and such huge glittering cuff links on his sleeves, that these hands clearly absorbed all his attention and did not allow him any freedom of thought. Raymond noticed it at once and smiled.

'Ah, yes, let me introduce you,' he said. 'My colleagues: Westley Eyler, Umar Rodrigues,' and turning to Fletcher: 'A pestilent paparazzo, a filth-monger, would sell his mother if there were people interested, a PI with the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair, and my friend, Louis Fletcher, handyman for the Daily Shit.'

'Very pleased,' said the gaunt man on the left.

'I have the luck of knowing your boss,' said Eyler, proffering his slender hand with its cadaverous skin.

Fletcher frowned, shook the hand coldly, and turned at once to Raymond. Though he had some respect for Big Dave, the well known editor of the Daily Print, nevertheless he could not stand being addressed as a simple blood hound of Big Dave rather than as the very much freelance, very much - he would even risk, "egalitarian" PI he was.  
'No, I'm no longer working for him. I've quarreled with them all and no longer go to the meetings,' he said, addressing Raymond.

'That was quick!' Raymond said with a smile. 'But how? Why?'

'A long story. I'll tell you some day,' said Fletcher, but he began telling it at once. 'Well, to make it short, someone, very persuasively, convinced me that I should leave and that it will be to my outmost advantage to put my talent to work some place else.' He was glaring at Raymond fiercely. 'On the one hand, that paper's a plaything, and I'm neither young enough nor old enough to amuse myself with playthings. And on the other...' (he faltered) 'hand, it's not for me to make money off honest man with squeaky clean public images like yourselves. Before I was free as a bird, but now I'm fettered... not in the form of bribes, but in the form of promised but unpaid salaries.' He spoke with such an élan, sweetness and charm that the meaning of his words almost bit when finally understood.

'I see you're in a new phase again, a conservative one,' said Raymond. 'But we'll talk later.'

'Yes, later. But I had to see you,' Fletcher said, looking with hatred at Eyler's hand.

Raymond smiled almost imperceptibly. 'Didn't you say you'd never put on a suit jacket again?' he said, looking over his new clothes, obviously from a French tailor. 'So! I see - a new phase.'

Fletcher's face was beset by a lecherous expression, but not the kind normal people would sport - the kind which one's bashfully aware of and which morphs into shame - but a vicious animal's, feeling that their whole face lit up and that the other's can't help but see, not becoming ashamed as a result, but being fired up even more, almost to the point of glee. And it was still so strange to see Fletcher's hungry smile, though he has seen it many times, that Raymond stopped looking at him.

'So where shall we see each other? I need very, very much to have a talk with you,' said Fletcher.

Raymond appeared to reflect.

'I'll tell you what: let's go to Bellamy's for lunch and talk there. I'm free until three.'

'Yes,' Fletcher replied after a moment's thought, 'that should be fine.'

'Excellent. See you later, then. Watch out, I know you, don't forget or suddenly leave the country!' Raymond called out with a nonchalant tone.

'I won't, mein Schatz.' replied Fletcher, and put the papers he's been hugging down on the coffee table. And, remembering only at the door that he had forgotten to take leave of Raymond's colleagues, Fletcher walked out of the house.

'Must be a very busy gentleman,' said Eyler, after Fletcher left.

'You have no idea' added Raymond.

* * *

Fletcher was not particularly the fan of Steak Tartare and slave-contracts that had him collecting bits and dots, and occasionally dogging after or sitting next to people making phone calls. Though the silver lining right in front of him: woolen sweater, hipster glasses, prada shirt manifest, was enough sweet a sight to keep him in line. At least for lunch time. Besides, he still only cared about money and dead man don't have any. On his very narrow horizon of reasoning, this thought occupied the largest part of the landscape.

Listening to Raymond's phone conversation, he nibbled away, and took huge gulps of the wine, he has refilled his glass now twice. Time to time he looked into the far distance, assessing the information bits he caught from Ray, or from the other party's louder spoken word morsels. Then as someone who was pinched he would fix his gaze again on Raymond, watching him like a hawk.

'Absolutely no way,' Raymond said with his usual 'I can't believe it's something that has to be spelled out' vexed tone of voice, 'We're not a wacky troupe of realtors who sell posh basements for pocket money. Look, tell him we're bent on selling the business as a whole, he can't just buy parts of it.'

'Well, you just sit back and let me worry about that' Raymond now was tapping his fingers agitated on Fletcher's heavy dossier, on its front, with a serial killer's handwriting, it read: "BUYER'S LIST VERSION 12". Like you, I have skin in this game, I would say, even more than you; so don't ever again cross your line, because you will find me crossing mine. Now, look I would like you to tell the guy from Morocco that he's free to lick my ass clean in business hours, and on the weekend between 2pm and 8pm, yeah? Bye-bye.'

'Lucky boy,' Fletcher murmured under his breath wiping his mouth with a napkin. Seeing Raymond give him the blackest of looks he sat up straight and contorted his face into an expression of a polite smile mixed with idle content. Ray has now put his phone aside, his hands clasped together seemingly deep in his thoughts, Fletcher felt it's the right time to sneak in a little question.

'Were Eyler and Rodrigues the representatives of the Moroccan bloke?'

Raymond, vexed and as if mentally pained by the interruption, turned to his companion opposite of him, who looked more pleased with himself than an alley cat next to a restaurant's trash container, then with a wiping motion caressed his beard as if to ask: so you really think you'll get an answer? But Fletcher, whose memory of his first rodeo was not fresh anymore, and whose only job at Mickey and The Merry Grass-choppers LLC, at least according to him, was to excavate answers regarding the job he was hired to do, pressed on like he was met with no resistance and with a smile said:

'If you had only looked at the love letter's' Fletcher lowered his gaze to the dossier on the table, 'I keep tirelessly writing to you on your request, maybe you wouldn't have to waste your time with flaky candidates, my darling.'

'Well, I looked at your carefully piled shit, and in it you're drooling on about candidates I've already discarded,' said Ray now with an icy calmness. 'You know Mickey's conditions. My only sane guess is that your playing with your life on purpose, because you're a masochistic little shit who always likes to be on the edge and on the nerves of someone sheep enough to tolerate. What you would be clever to see is that you're not kept alive because our little business is a charitable organisation for worms like you, but because we need you to work. So you better start pulling your socks up.'

Fletcher listened, but didn't feel inclined to take Raymond's words to his heart. Over the years he's been threatened many times and he could pick out a serious one from the first two words and a tone of voice. This teensy-weensy warning wasn't one. A smile crept onto his face again, he couldn't help it.

'Oh, bunny, you can tell me if the noose is getting too tight, I'm your compadre, your confidante..." Raymond winced, 'your nearest and dearest...'

Raymond become agitated again, but not in the way that he was during his phone conversation, he looked like someone who's terribly sick and now is trying to convince himself to go to the loo and make himself throw up in hope that it will at once ease his suffering.

'God knows, I would rather trust a homeless bum and the two squirrels living in my backyard than you, but topsy-turvy situations like this call for topsy-turvy solutions.' Ray wet his throat with his wine that sat 'till now untouched. 'I know it from a good source that Mickey thinks I teamed up with you against him, he thinks that I'm forging some kind of fucking coup d'état and you're my consigliere. Outlandish as it is...'

'Took longer for you to find out than I expected, but not bad' Fletcher hit almost a jovial and paternal tone. '10/10 for the diligent work and fine ears, 0/10 for finesse.'

Raymond for a second looked puzzled, but his mood quickly shifted to anger and from anger to rage and bewildered disbelief.

'Oh, mon ange, can't believe you thought I'll be your lap dog. Mickey's already on the edge, it only took some well-placed hints and half-sentences to have this vicious idea nested in his disheveled mind. And now bunny, I pay the bill, and we're getting a cab, yes?'


	2. Chapter 2

The stiction to move the corpse of a roughly 177 lb guy is great, a lot bigger than people would imagine; the stiction to move a Fiat 500 with dead batteries and one dead body in it is ridiculously big though that thing is barely anything more than a shopping cart. Raymond knew all these things by experience and the new factoid he came to know was that the stiction needed to get a pestilent rat like Fletcher out of the way is beyond human power.

Raymond was leaning over the sink and if he hadn't been too disgusted by looking at the yellowish hue he would have threw up into it. _that crafty bastard, ..windbag, aeolian piece of turd,_ but the shuffling in the kitchen interrupted his Joycean stream of consciousness. It was almost like he heard the rhythmic clicks of a keyboard. He went to look.

Fletcher was typing something on his laptop, standing not sitting, seemingly right in the middle of three things at once.

The kitchen definitely matched the bathroom; all cluttered, old, uncared-for, disgustingly colorful and boring at the same time. Having been in this flat for only a few hours, Raymond understood why Fletcher always hung out at his house instead of staying at home.

'Have you been on 'Hoarders' yet?' said Raymond and waltzed toward the mugs and broken Presto percolator. 'They pay good money, I heard.'

Fletcher kept typing and smiled at the laptop, then let out a hmm.

'I thought you might take a shower' he began.

Raymond looked at him intently. 'Yeah, I thought I should, but then you might join.'

For the first time since he walked in, Fletcher locked eyes with him.

'You still have plenty of time, dear.'

'Yeah, I could shower, but I thought you might join' Raymond repeated himself, with greater emphasis on the second half of the sentence.

Fletcher resumed typing.

He just couldn't bring himself to understand. Raymond ran his fingers through his hair searching for the causes of the milliard phantom pains - broken glass pieces - but he found none. Just like the last ten times he would've done this since he escaped his house and took shelter in Fletcher's rathole.

He poured some coffee for himself into a cup that said Merry Christmaz on it and ruffled his hair. He still couldn't grasp it. He would have been with Mickey ever since he fished him out of university with a rod and the tasty catch of big money and influence. He knew Mickey, Mickey knew him, so?

He clenched his fingers around the kitchen sink and watched them turn white.

'Will you finally tell what magic words did you use on Mickey or I'll have to find that out myself before he shots me in the head in the basement of Sir Willoughby De Loutherbergh?'

'Ts-ts bunny, he won't hurt you.'

Raymond crossed the room and shut Fletcher's laptop. 'I don't know what kind of mental disease you have but I can promise you that Elon Musk sooner will have his fat face carved into a mountaintop on Mars than you get Mickey killed. And if you're seriously thinking about running away and hiding in Russia, than I can just help you out of your misery with a bullet right here and now.'

Raymond watched Fletcher's face intently and observed every movement of the muscles that contorted his face into a know it all grin he knew so well and seen so much.

_what a punchable face_

'I'm not that much of an idiot as you would like me to be, Raymondo' with that Fletcher suddenly stood up. 'We're going straight to Mickey.'

Raymond exhaled sharply. 'YOU go straight Mickey.'

'I have a plan Raymond.'

'Then wipe your ass with it.'

'Do you think if I didn't know what I'm doing, you would be alive to talk to me like this?'

Ray breathed heavily. He shook his head, he felt this familiar constricting feeling in his stomach and he felt seconds away from losing it. 'Five men,' he started raising his voice, 'we're at my house this afternoon and they almost shot me dead in my fuckin' kitchen.'

'Oh, and look at you know telling me about it all.'

'Shut it, Fletcher, shut it...'

'I tell you what bunny. You might be on the edge now, but you do understand that by coming with me you have nothing to lose. It's either sure death or death-maaaybe.' Fletcher picked up his phone and walked towards the bedroom. 'If I were you I'd choose the latter.'

* * *

Nebulous and humid - all his thoughts that had been circling around Mickey, his person and idea,.. The concept of him? Raymond swallowed and felt his adam's apple bob lightly, he heard it too. If he hadn't recognized his eyes - light, world weary but tender, all the crows legs that would smile at you, the iris with it's starry dotted Orion, a universe to be lost in - had he not recognized that, he wouldn't know Mickey's standing before him. God he's in pieces. Well kept clothes, but packaging what? That dried out husk of a man? If he could choose he'd rather never see him at all than see him like this.

'We had this all built... what, ten years ago' Mickey began, not even looking, wandering his eyes around the halogen light sources of the basement. 'God, that it should come to this, Ray.'

Raymond licked his lips to speak, but all the words stuck in him. He was so angry he couldn't breath.

''I'd have given it to you' Mickey made an open palmed gesture.

Even his movements are lifeless - Raymond noted.

"And then you" Mickey stopped as a smile crept onto his face and a light giggle escaped him, "you decided to rip me a new one." He almost seemed delirious, still smiling he looked at the two black-clad, sunglassed man standing next to and slightly behind him. They had no reactions to give so he turned back.

There was something pitiable even in the way he sat. He looks like one of those old lions of menageries - patched fur, a slow gaze, kept inside, made to prowl around in the small cage called England. Just a sorry sight. Raymond looked down at the basement's dirty cement floor and he fixed his gaze on the indentations.

'Last words?'

The silence was as sickening almost as the the musty smell.

'What did you do to Fletcher?'

'Oh, you're worried about you're little compadere?' he smiled again.

'Quite the contrary, I hope you made him eat his own shit and gave him to the pigs for dinner.'

Mickey now looked a bit jittery, a bit upset.

'Last words!'

'What d'you want me to say?'

He smiled again and laughed. 'I will kill you, it's not a joke, Ray.'

'Oh, really? Because it looks like a bad joke.'

Mickey waved his hand at one of his Dobermanns.

The hit on his jaw was hard, but he felt too numb from the former beating to really appreciate it in its full glory. Raymond spit, then breathed in and out slowly, he felt dizzy he couldn't keep it together.

He didn't feel himself anymore.

* * *

'And this is the catch, darlin' Fletcher poured another, the glass's edge rang out as it met with the bottle, 'no one will believe you're more than a middle manager, a busy bee for the company as long as you're not willing to bite them in the ass.'

The waiter waltzed to their table again and asked them whether they want the bill. He had this nifty polo shirt on, as they all did, but this one had a red line running along the collar, and the horse on it seemed prettier, whiter sown, more elaborate. Raymond loved the crew of these cruise ships. He loved the ambiance, he loved the glasses, the sight, the people, the situation, the smell, the lights.

_he wants us to leave, fuck Fletcher. ..lower your ff.. your voice_

'No thanks, not yet.' He took his glasses off and cleaned them with the material of his white shirt.

'So you're essentially saying that if I were to shot Mickey in the balls and tell him to go and eat shit, he would make me the viceroy of British Marijuanistan.'

Fletcher was so in the middle of it. He was practically gyrating. Vertically. Raymond would never saw anyone gyrate vertically. That crafty snake, _that snake lipped swindler._

'You gotta be more subtle darlin', you can't go for the jugular right away, you gotta' he gesticulated, moving his hands gently in the air miming something, godknowswhat.

'You gotta make it seem like you have no hands in it. You have to be the bad AND the good cop.'

"Shut it, Fletcher" he took the bottle of Chardonnay and places it on his side of the table. 'Shut it or I'll shut you up.'

'I can tell you how to. I can plan some, I can do some..'

'I don't need your help" he finger quoted, he felt numb the champagne bubbled in him. _no pain only champagne. what a horrible pun, who told him. who.._ \- 'I don't need your hELp. The gate of hell has your kind as guardians hELPing people like me through.'

'What do you do if he really sells the company?' Fletcher nicked the bottle back.

'Looking at our prospective buyers I don't think hell be able to sell it too soon. And I'm far from being bad-blooded in saying that.'

'You give too much credit to Mickey. He really believes he can get out of this with loads of cash, all his limbs and some kind of integrity. You're under estimating the degree of his delusion.'

'You're delusional...'

'Come on.'

Raymond leaned over. 'I've no plans Fletcher because I don't need any. And besides I'm fine with where I am now.'

'You can't believe that.' Fletcher pointed at the table and gestured in the general direction of the interior of the restaurant.

'Well I would have better people to be with at better places, and I usually do. Don't forget that you're only here for a while..'

'And aren't we all transient like that. I bet Mickey thinks you, too, are only a transient trouble.'

Fletcher's a worm, Fletcher's a scum, but those words really found him then and there. Maybe the Chardonnay, maybe the chatter and the week on the ship, the sea sickness of the heart, that they - even if only like this in its plastik, safe, bourgeois, placid framework - are sailing the seven solitudes.

And that's how these things find you, ha? They find you in your loneliest loneliness.

Fletcher would insist on staying and "going to the bar sweetheart, there, I pay the bill", but he felt like having none of that, and soon he would be fiddling with those god fucked magnet card-key things, and he would see red. And then Fletcher would touch his hand and get the card out of it and grab and pat his arm while he did magic to the door of his room an opened it. And he would invite himself in and sit him down onto the edge the bed, and go to the minibar to get some more booze to shake a fuckin' appletini, to get him out of the ghost of his inhibitions he still got covering and shielding him from the serpent tongue of Fletcher. He would feel Fletcher's warm palm on his crotch and he would shudder into the touch and feel his body alight. Fletcher has a quick tongue, what a serpent. His fall, his seducer who takes things away and gives them to the devil.


End file.
